Mariah Carey Pulls Midnight Santa Prank On Jimmy Kimmel, Talks ‘Super Sweet’ Mention in Britney Spears Memoir

Mariah Carey is the Queen of Christmas… pranks. The singer has now officially joined the list of A-list singers (Rihanna, Britney Spears, Dua Lipa) who’ve participated in the time-honored tradition of scaring the bejeezus out of Jimmy Kimmel in the middle of the night for our amusement.

On Thursday night’s (Nov. 2) Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Carey and her Christmas minions — including accomplices dressed as elves and Santa — snuck into Kimmel’s house in the middle of the night and gently roused the late night host. “Jimmy, I didn’t mean to wake you up, but it’s time!” Carey whispered sweetly as a confused Kimmel was woken from a deep sleep.

“What time is it?” he gurgled. “Hit it!” Carey replied as her holiday staple “All I Want For Christmas Is You” blasted out and the tinsel intruders began throwing fake snow and ringing sleigh bells as lights flashed and Kimmel’s wife Molly danced in glee at her husband’s annoyance. The bit ended with a barefoot Kimmel — wearing Molly’s robe and still rocking his mouth guard — accepted a piece of Carey’s new “It’s Time!” Christmas merch before groggily going off to bed, again.

Carey was in the studio for some couch time as well, laughing about her love of prank calls as a child and revealing that the police got involved one time after the then-11-year-old MC relentlessly called a girl who bullied her as a child. They also, of course, talked about how “All I Want” has become a perennial holiday No. 1, a development that Carey said is “bananas” because it was the first-ever Christmas song she ever wrote.

“I just wanted it to sound like a classic because that’s the kind of Christmas song I want… I just wanted it to be timeless,” she said. The singer said she “hopes” her 12-year-year-old twins, Monroe and Moroccan, like her signature song, but either way the kids will be along for the sleigh ride when Carey embarks on her 13-date Merry Christmas One and All! tour, which begins on Nov. 15 in Highland, CA.

“I’m putting them on my tour, which is coming up soon,” she said. “They’re gonna do various moments of music-making and merriment.” She also pushed back on Kimmel’s questions about whether it really is “time” to start thinking about the holidays when we still have Thanksgiving to get through, a push-back against the Christmas creep that Carey helped pioneer with her “It’s Time!” stunts.

“It’s the season, darling,” she assured Kimmel, but adding, “We have to have Thanksgiving. It’s the holidays, is it not?” Frankly, MC said, she doesn’t disagree with Jimmy that Thanksgiving has become a bit of a “speed bump” on the way to Santa season. “But I had to just go with the flow because everybody was rushing the holiday season and they started playing my song, so I kept being like, ‘not yet, don’t play it yet, why are we playing Christmas songs?'”

So, what was a joke at first became a lean-in with her funny “it’s time” videos over the past two seasons.

The singer also talked about making a cameo in Britney Spears’ best-selling tell-all memoir, The Woman in Me. “I heard something about it,” she said of her mentions in the book, as Kimmel noted that Britney said she loves Mariah, with Carey saying she loves her right back. He then read an excerpt in which Britney wrote about being at an awards show and knocking on Mariah’s dressing room door and being confronted with a “beautiful, otherworldly light,” 20 years before ring lights were a thing.

“Of course I had a ring light [in 2003],” the always perfectly-lit singer said. “By the way, that was super sweet what Britney said about me.”

Watch Carey on Kimmel below.